Air quality within an enclosed environment, such as a home or office, can present a significant health concern, particularly for individuals having respiratory illnesses and diseases. Adverse health effects may be caused by different air quality issues including both airborne contaminants (e.g., smoke, pollen, and dust) and low humidity. Various types of devices have been developed in an effort to improve the quality of air within such environments by treating these air quality issues. In particular, ionic air purifiers, such as the Pure-Ion® ionic air purifier available from Brookstone®, may be used to improve air quality by ionic filtering to remove airborne particles. Humidifiers may be used to improve air quality by increasing the moisture in the air to raise the humidity. Thus, separate devices are often needed to improve the overall air quality.
Although air purifiers and humidifiers can be used separately to address the separate issues of airborne contaminants and low humidity, a single integrated device that effectively performs both airborne contaminant removal and humidification would be advantageous. Combining ionic air filtering and humidification into one integrated device, however, presents unique challenges because they operate in significantly different ways. In particular, ionic air filters use charged electrical surfaces to generate electrically charged air and humidifiers use water to add moisture to the air. The incompatibility of these two significantly different principles of operation may have prevented these devices from being combined effectively.